


our almost-instinct almost true

by temporalDecay



Series: what will survive of us is love [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Quadrant Confusion, darkleer being darkleer, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:01:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darkleer makes peace, with the world and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our almost-instinct almost true

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saeto15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saeto15/gifts).



> This pairing is quickly becoming my fanfic equivalent of comfort food.

“You _matter_ to me.” 

You choke back on a whimper as he slays you with words; soft, kind, fervent words you want to believe more than anything in this world. The rage has long since died out, and as always, all that is left is bitter and vile clinging to the underside of your tongue. You look up at him, from the slumped mess of limbs you’ve become, without mindless anger to keep you upright, half hiding behind your hair. He’s doing that thing he does, when he’s frustrated and annoyed and unsure how to tackle the problem at hand, squinting and snarling and looking pitifully determined to see things through. It feels like someone’s stomping all over your soul. 

“I should go,” you mumble, with what little sense you have left, because you don’t really remember much, after you saw him fall, but it can’t have been pretty. “I—“ 

“You _matter_ to _me_ ,” he insists, stomping his foot and looking thoroughly too young to be defiled by one such as you. “Stop being stupid already, and just accept the fucking facts.” 

You flinch when he touches you, when he gets into your personal space like he belongs in your lap and your whole body was carved out to fit around him like this. You want to lean in and let him carry you, and you hate yourself because you know he would _try_. 

“What I have done is utterly unacceptable,” you whisper into his forehead, not yet in control enough to risk wrapping your arms around him because your hands are still shaking and there’s grime and mud and blood and gore under your claws and he doesn’t deserve to be smeared with that, no matter how much you want to card your fingers through his hair. “I should go. I was never meant to be here in the first place.” 

He smells sweet, with a hint of something desperate and absolute lurking in the background, since his heat is scant weeks away. It’s not enough to affect other trolls, and certainly not enough to affect _you_ , but you think you’ve become so used to it, you can smell it on him, before it starts. That feral, thoughtless impulse that tries to dominate you during his heat, that’s about the same spectrum as the rage you just rose from. Except you are not afraid of yourself, when you surrender to him, because at least the lust he fosters on you can be controlled. You don’t remember what you’ve done; you never do, when you lose yourself to the screaming between your ears. Nothing good ever comes from the anger and the rage that tears away bits and pieces of your sanity whenever it comes. 

“It’s okay,” Karkat tries, naïve and tender and it shatters you inside out because it’s _not_. 

“I,” you begin, ready to explain in detail all the monstrous things you’ve done and why he should not stop you from leaving, when leaving him would be the greatest kindness you’ve ever attempted, but then he reaches out to wrap his arms around your neck and hold you tight as if he could keep you together with that touch. “ _No,_ ” you snarl, before you can help yourself, shaking while you choke on shapeless fear, “don’t you _dare_ flip pale on me, I will not—“ 

“Shut _up_ , you miserable mountain of inbred stupid,” he orders, fingers digging into the nape of your neck, and you obey like you always do, because he is the last star left in your sky, the errant planet you willingly orbit faithfully, like a moon. “Shut up with your stupid quadrant implications and your goddamn obsessions and your fucking _guilt_.” You find yourself shaking again, self-control splintering in half, despite your best attempts, and yet you can’t bring yourself to pull away from him. “You _matter_ to me,” he repeats, slowly, with the frustrated undertone that’s only ever really aimed at you. “I’m not twelve feet of feral strength tightly leashed by all the self-control in the world, but shits would still be thoroughly lost if something happened to you.” 

You close your eyes and focus on his breathing, so you don’t get swept away by the thousands of potential disasters that set you off in the first place, when you saw him fall the first time. You breathe in that sweet, sweet scent and remind yourself he’s alive and unharmed and then move on to remind yourself he doesn’t _belong_ to you. That he’s not a thing you can own, despite what the basest corners of your mind demand. 

“You _matter_ to _me_ ,” he repeats, as if he believes saying it enough times will make it stick inside your skull. “Stop trying to run away from it, you dumb fuck, you’re going the wrong way.” 

The honorable thing would be to push him away and start walking and not stop until you put half the goddamn planet between you. But you forsook honor a long time ago, and you decided, when he asked you to follow him into the depths of his Ancestor’s cult, that he would be the one thing you would not deny yourself. Even if he’s not a thing and you are his far more than he’ll ever be yours. 

“You matter to me,” he repeats, like a mantra, pressing his forehead against yours, not letting you hide behind your hair anymore. “I’m not going anywhere unless you do, now stop shaking like a plate of blueberry squirmgel. It’s _okay_.” 

All around you, there’s broken walls and a smoldering wreck as testament that you did, indeed, lose your temper. That is not okay. That is so far away from okay you realize him sitting on your lap is the only thing keeping you from self-destructing and caving in on yourself. 

It’s not okay, it will never be okay, and you would do it all over again without a second thought. 

“Alright,” you whisper, hoarse and tired, because above all, you want to believe him. 

“You matter to me,” he says, yet again, with infinite patience as he gathers you to him, and you forget about the world beyond his voice and his hands, because _he_ matters to you, to the exclusion of everything else. 

  


* * *

  


In the aftermath of the attempt on Karkat’s life, you realize the puny mockery of soldiers this Empress calls her own are terrified of you. They’re soldiers from the space era, raised to fight in ships and with advanced weapons that make up for the frailness of their bodies and the infirmity of their minds. They don’t know what war was, before, when the army and not the fleet was the most powerful arm of the Empire. When trolls fought against trolls, instead of imposing themselves on aliens. These trolls do not know the strength it took to conquer the very first planet of the Empire, to bring their Ancestors to heel. 

These trolls do not know you were once poisoned by the pity and the rage of the Grand Highblood and that your rage has never forgotten how to become a weapon. 

Karkat is crowned Governor of Alternia without a hitch two nights later, despite the fact the attempt on his life caused you to demolish the lavish palace the Empress gave him to serve as his seat of power. You loom in silence in the background, and if you stick a little closer to him, if you refuse to leave him alone with anyone, no one is suicidal enough to tell you not to. He certainly doesn’t mind. He looks over his shoulder often enough, smiling a little weakly, but always sincerely, when he sees you. Your rage made the entire planet – a planet of children groomed to become pawns in the Empress’ intergalactic chess games, not to understand strength and prowess like your generation did – tremble with cowering fear. It reminded them you exist, that you come from a time few others remember, much less lived through. 

But it didn’t change the way Karkat looks at you. 

On the third night of his rule as Exalted Governor of the Home Planet, Karkat does something that would have never occurred to you before. Rather than leave his post, with the threat of his heat looming above his head, he orders everyone else to go. You watch from atop the highest pile of rumble still standing, as servants and guards and diplomats are politely but firmly herded away in a pilgrimage you are only beginning to realize will become a ritual. 

“C’mon,” says the Governor, once the empty palace – it was a gorgeous thing, before you happened to it – is silent like your old ruins, sliding his hand into yours, “I want to fuck you so bad on that throne.” 

It begins to dawn on you, bit by bit, as the panic and the fear slowly ebbs away with each night, that your rage and your strength and yourself haven’t managed to destroy this yet. That he might wish to keep you almost as much as you want to stay. You bare your neck to him, in the ablution trap, and all he does is groom your hair. You offer your hands, palms up, almost in prayer, and all he does is kiss your fingers and refuse to be afraid. 

He’s not a thing for you to own. He’s not a debt you must repay. He’s not a child you must protect. He’s not a prophet or a god or a sacrament you have defiled. 

You dare not name what he is, to you, because only silence knows how to keep your secrets, so it is in silence that you swear to never leave his side. 

  


* * *

  


“The only reason I had them built this thing,” Karkat croons, in that hollow, breathless tone that only the oversaturation of hormones can give him, “is because memories of this will keep me sane, in the long fucking run.” 

You clench your hands on the armrests of a throne clearly designed for someone your size, rather than his. You clench until your fingers leave imprints on the ornate wood, because your bulge is as deep inside him as it can go, and he’s rolling his hips in tight little circles above your groin, grinding down what’s left of your sanity with each twitch. He’s hot and slick and miserably tight around your length, and every word he breathes into your mouth is wrapped in the scent of need and lust that makes your blood boil and rush backwards in your veins. 

His bulge writhes against your skin, leaving a sticky trail of white hot red all over your groin. Very slowly, very painfully aware of every muscle it takes to do it, you raise a hand to wrap around it and play with the tiny, hardened ridges at the top. Karkat tips his head back in a wordless moan and unravels all around you, over and over again, while you try to make it last as long as you can. 

In the end, he bends his spine back further, until he can press his fingers against the swollen lips of your nook, and then he shoves them in to force the bloated fullness of your genetic material out of you. It rushes like a flood down the ornate seat onto the stairs, and Karkat laughs when it mixes with his own, repeated offerings to create a mock carpet of utmost royal purple. 

“She offered me immortality,” he whispers, when you’re too exhausted to properly put together an outraged expression at such a disrespectful act upon his office, “if I want it. I told her I didn’t want it if you weren’t part of it.” 

You try to remember, his Ancestor at the post, your arrow in his gut and Her hatred finally forcing its way through his throat. You try to remember all you owe, all you know you owe, but all that comes to you is the sight of Karkat spread and wanton and trusting and _offering_. Always offering. 

“I’ll think about it,” you say, because you’re yourself and you cannot, even now, bring yourself to beg _yes, oh please, yes_ as you’d like to. 

He offers you eternity, the one thing you always feared more than yourself. 

You lay yourself in the waste of your last coupling, slurry sinking into your hair, and offer yourself to him as it’ll please him to take you. He fucks you as he details exactly how he’s going to use these memories to carry him through the daily, boring grind and what he’d do to anyone who tried to take them away from him. You don’t need his protection or his kindness or his lust or his anything, but you feel you won’t be able to breathe on your own if he’s ever missing. 

Eternity, you think, without the yearning for death and the guilt holding your forehead close to the ground. 

Eternity _with Karkat_ , you amend, as he tries to make his limbs long enough to wrap around your body, and realize there’s something almost like wonder when you think about it. 

It’s not what you’d have wanted, before, it’s not anything you thought you’d ever crave with the hunger of a starving man. It’s not the punishment for all your sins and it will not be quiet or peaceful or forlorn. 

You close your eyes and smile, because it’s yours to have and you’re done questioning if you deserve to take it. 

**Author's Note:**

> [More jawdroppingly gorgeous art by the awesome Saeto.](http://anookisfinetoo.tumblr.com/post/77030485226/darkleer-karkat-will-never-get-old)


End file.
